Wild Ones (The Lane) (18 page)

Chapter Twenty-One

The front door closed behind me with a slam that was exaggerated by the silence of the otherwise quiet complex. Pausing on the stoop, I glanced around, expecting the neighbors to be peering at me from behind parted curtains, drawn to the sounds of the dysfunction leaking from the corner apartment, shattering the calm of their nice community. Not a creature stirred, however. Either we hadn’t been heard or they were too polite to gawk. Unlike my apartment building, though I could no longer really call it that. There, other people’s drama was considered a spectator sport, and with paper-thin walls, every fight or disagreement was broadcast to the neighbors. Neighbors who were all too eager to listen and sometimes even participate themselves.

On the apartments surrounding ours—his—Christmas lights twinkled faintly in the gathering dark, reminding me of the fairy lights my tiny Grandma O’Connell had told Christian and me about as kids. God, how we’d always looked forward to her rare visits, for the reprieves they would bring while she was there, spinning her stories in that gentle Irish lilt of hers, crafting tales too fantastic to be real. I never did have the luxury of believing in her magic.

Fat snowflakes had started to fall lazily to the ground, where they were already starting to stick. It was the first official snowfall of winter. We had gotten others, violent flurries that had come out of nowhere like white sandstorms that coated everything in a fine powder before melting away almost instantly. But none that had stuck. None that had blanketed the world the way I liked. It seemed fitting somehow that I would be out in the one that would. That I would get to witness it firsthand.

I started walking.

Already my ankle was throbbing and my ribs ached, but I didn’t even pause next to my car where it was parked next to Luke’s truck. The contrast between the two vehicles was so extreme that I found myself wanting to give them both the finger for reasons I wasn’t entirely sure of. The streetlights overhead cast a warm glow that did nothing to soften or hide the various blemishes on my car’s body; dings and rust spots I had always known about, had always been aware of, but never really noticed before. I glared at it as I passed, scowling at the memories I could feel lurking in the backseat, ghostly whispers from a life I left behind when Jax walked out of my hospital room and I let him go.

The wind picked up suddenly, a freezing burst of air that pelted my cheeks with snowflakes and shoved the hair back from my face like a too-rough lover. For a moment, the barest of seconds between two hard-to-draw breaths, I swore I could hear Jax’s laugh on it, the one I’d always loved, that had filled me with a warmth that sank into my bones.

I kept walking, pulling my eyes away from my car and shaking my head to clear it of things both too real and too painful to dwell on. Instead I focused on the headlights I could only just see in the distance, speeding along the main road past the entrance. I walked toward them, drawn to them like a moth to a flame, trying to ignore the shrieking, pulsating protests of my ankle and ribs.

I pictured men like Wall Street Mark in those cars, boring predicable guys anxious to get home after another nine-to-five day at the office. A home where their unchaotic wives waited for them, happy and content with the nice, neat lives they had built together. Lives free of violence and drama and confusion. Flatlined lives, I’d once called them to Jax. We’d wondered if they even existed outside of old TV shows before concluding that they must. Somewhere.

I’d never been interested in them, aside from vague curiosity, but now that my hair was windblown and wild, with bruises scattered across my skin like fading yellow landmarks, I found myself considering them seriously for the first time ever. Were they easier? Simpler? Did you grow so used to the monotony of them that you came to crave it? Was it even possible to go from a girl like me, a crazy girl with baggage and demons and a thirst for things both dangerous and unhealthy, to one who wore floral prints and pearls and had lunch dates with similar girls where politics and recipes were major topics? Could I be the type who relished scheduled weekly missionary sex with a husband whose waistline was full and hair was thin? It didn’t sound appealing, any of it, but especially not the predictability of it all. Endless numbered days of routine, where extremes were neither desired nor tolerated.

Easier? Maybe. But could I ever live like that? I didn’t know.

I could go back. I could keep walking until I came to those tracks that separated my side of town from Luke’s and I could cross them. I could go back to Jax and our—his—apartment with my cramped room and loud neighbors. It wouldn’t be easy. Jax would give me hell about all of it. He’d be angry, hurt, and simple apologies wouldn’t be enough to ease that. I’d have to beg, plead, real on-the-knees groveling type of stuff, but maybe, one day, we’d be able to ignore that time in our lives when I lost my head and heart to a boy with scars he willingly signed up for.

Maybe I could learn, somehow, to again be the Bri I was before Luke Turner. Before our eyes connected across a smoky room and I heard the gravelly voice that would become the song I lost myself in. Maybe I could again be the girl who was wild and free, who felt out of control sometimes but had her level best friend to balance her. One day, so far in the future I could barely see it now, I could maybe find someone like Wall Street Mark and settle down. Leave behind the booze and the bars and the sad, lost souls who gathered there waiting for a girl in a too-short skirt to bring them the drink they could drown themselves in.

But I didn’t want to settle down. Not now. Not ever.

I didn’t want to settle down and Luke didn’t want to settle me.

He wasn’t a Wall Street Mark who would forever view me as a project. A running experiment on whether or not you could turn a ho into a housewife. He wasn’t a Jax who, despite all his goodness—God, my heart ached just thinking about that—thought I only needed stability. Luke saw me, the messy girl with the too-tall heels, who bit before she growled, and he liked it. No. He more than liked it. Luke loved me and he didn’t want to change me.

I stopped abruptly, those headlights closer now, a little more real, a little easier to touch, and I sat down on the curb, pulling my pack of cigarettes out from the pocket of my jacket. I shook one free with a hand that was steady despite the cold and the ache that danced along the bone of my wrist. Lighting it, I leaned back slightly and tipped my head up to regard the few stars peeking through the breaks in the clouds above me. They gazed back with even stares, watching, it felt like, waiting for me to come to a conclusion that was hovering just out of my reach. I blew a puff of smoke toward them, hardly discernible from the next smoke-free one that followed. The snow, falling faster now, gathered on the tops of my thighs in small drifts and stuck to the ends of my hair.

I was not my ma.

The realization came so suddenly and with such force that had I been standing, I would have staggered under the weight of it.

I was not my ma and Luke was not my da and that meant both nothing and everything. It was what it all came down to. I never wanted to be the woman who shared a bed with a man who wouldn’t even share his last name with their children. I was terrified, had always been terrified on some level, of history repeating itself, of losing myself so completely that one day I would wake up in another man’s bed, money on the nightstand, and not know how I got there. It was how I’d always pictured it happening to my ma, that she woke up from some kind of stupor that had spanned years and realized where she was, who she was, and what she was doing. Only it was too late to do anything about it, too late to change anything. I had victimized her in my mind, only I was just now realizing it. I pictured her as someone who’d been taken in by my da, who’d lost herself somewhere in their relationship, and I lived in constant fear of the same thing happening to me. That fear had only intensified when I found myself treading paths she once had, standing in the middle of a bloodthirsty crowd, claimed by the one making them shout and stomp their feet in a show of unholy worship of violence for violence’s sake.

But the similarities between us stopped there. The fear of being her was the very thing that kept me from becoming her, a woman who lived not for herself or even for her children, but the man who hurt them. And that woman didn’t just magically become that. She made conscious and willing decisions to be her. Just as I could—and would—choose to not be like that. I’d never stop living for myself. I’d never whore myself out to support Luke and I’d never take Luke, or any other man, hitting me. We weren’t the same, me and Ma, and we never would be.

And Luke, though often unpredictable and sometimes angry, was nothing like my da. He didn’t step out of the ring only to come home to someone he’d crafted with his own hands. He’d never let another man touch me, period, and he’d never, ever, lift a hand against me himself.

Sure, we fought often and loudly, but that was us. Both of us. At our cores we were both fighters, and it was that shared trait, that common ground, that made us perfect for each other. I’d never give in. I’d sometimes be ridiculous about things not worth being ridiculous over, but Luke knew that, had seen it, and he would meet me halfway and be okay with it. Not like Jax, who just weathered my storms. Luke faced them head-on, and I faced his, and in them we found each other.

I could feel the cold seeping in through the ass of my pants but only in an abstract sort of way, so lost in my thoughts that it barely registered. Had Jax been there, he would have already hunted me down, probably with a blanket, ready to both lend an ear and talk me down. Maybe even admonish me for being out in the cold. He’d use some old-person saying like I would catch my death, and I would probably tease him for it but eventually allow him to lead me back into the warmth, my mind still buzzing, everything left to fester. There was no sign of Luke, though, and that was another sign of our compatibility. He knew, I think, that there were some places I needed to get to on my own and he stepped away to let me, went ahead to wait for me on the other side.

I stood just as abruptly as I had sat and took one last, hard look at the few, fading headlights I could see. This was my chance. I could keep walking and cross those dark, snow-covered tracks until I reached the old apartment, red-faced and aching. I could apologize to Jax and sleep in my own bed tonight with the worn sheets. Tomorrow I could go to Duke’s and possibly persuade King to give me back my job. If I couldn’t? The Lane was big enough. Someone always needed a beer brought to them.

I turned away. Back toward the apartments with their twinkling fairy lights. Back toward Luke.

We were sinners, Luke and I. We fought and we fucked and in the end, there would be no pearly gates for us. There never was for our kind. There was no salvation, we’d never walk streets of gold or build castles in the sky. But there was redemption. Together. It was in finding each other in the casual chaos of our lives, our souls recognizing each other’s in the darkness and accepting them. It was in the completeness we found together and in knowing that we weren’t out to remake the other into an ideal. Luke was me and I was him and we were made of the same stuff. Maybe, for some, opposites attracted, but for others, people like Luke and me, like called to like and it was in that likeness that I both lost and found myself. Maybe it wasn’t sweet. Maybe it wouldn’t necessarily save me or him, but there was grace in it, and it was amazing.

Because of that, I could compromise certain aspects of my life for him. For us. My job. My apartment. My reluctance to be involved in a lifestyle I spent so much of my childhood in. I had even given up Jax, something that stung worse than all the others combined. Maybe not forever. Maybe one day we would find ourselves in a place where Jax and Luke could coexist, but for now, I’d let him go. I could accept Luke’s job and the dangers that came with it, even when it reminded me of memories I spent so much time avoiding. I could do it because we were made for each other, even if everyone around us disagreed. We were two halves to the same whole, perfectly suited for each other. Perfect in our mutual imperfections.

I started walking back.

Above me, the snow fell harder, coming down in fat, energetic flakes that reduced my visibility to only a few feet in front of me. I glanced up, squinting slightly both to protect my eyes from the cold and attempt to see through the falling snow to the sky. The clouds had shifted, covering the stars, hiding them from my view and me from theirs. I wondered, as crazy as I knew it was, if they approved of my decision. I thought they might.

Footsteps, soft at first, but growing louder the closer they came to me in the still, quiet night, had me pulling my gaze away and glancing ahead. I recognized, through the snow that swirled and danced in the wind, the long stride of the figure coming toward me before any kind of alarm could set in. I felt myself smiling, wide and sincere, my heart banging wildly. It took every ounce of self-control I possessed to keep from breaking into a run I knew I’d only regret. Instead, I continued at my same pace, as maddeningly slow as it suddenly felt, a swooping sensation in my stomach growing stronger as we drew closer to one another. There was relief in seeing his face, the nearer we got. Relief that I couldn’t, and wouldn’t, ignore.

We stopped within touching distance, neither making the first move right away. We searched each others’ eyes as the silence around us moved in and stretched out between us.

Luke broke it first.

“You’re a mess.” Whether he was speaking in general or that moment specifically, I wasn’t sure. I agreed though.

“So are you.”

He grinned, a quick flash of white surrounded by the white falling around us, and took a step closer.

“Didn’t know if you’d still be out here,” he whispered in a husky voice, his hands coming up to frame my face, warm against cold. “Thought I might have to walk a ways to find you.”

“Nah. I was coming back.”

“Yeah?” He bent down, bringing his forehead to rest against mine, and I could smell the last cigarette he smoked on his breath.